alt Hacker NewsIt's so ridiculously easy to vacuum and charge a heat pump it's kind of unnecessary.
I think I spent $200 in parts on Amazon and have done 4 heat pumps now. It's a vacuum pump, a scale, and a digital manifold/guage. Punch the numbers for subcool/superheat into a calculator and use the temp probes on the lines where they connect to the condenser and you can even skip the scale.
Isn't the problem having access to the gas in the end ? They are tightly regulated, and this is why installers can charge a lot of money, I believe. How did you manage to locate a source?